


TimeShift

by gallifreyburning



Category: Doctor Who, Gallifrey (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: Angst, F/M, but also cracky angst, it's a smorgasbord, like hella angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-09
Updated: 2018-12-12
Packaged: 2019-09-12 16:14:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16876062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gallifreyburning/pseuds/gallifreyburning
Summary: After surviving the Time War and finding a happy ending, Leela wakes up in a strange place with an old antagonist, and must figure out how to get home.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ifailedtothinkofaname](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ifailedtothinkofaname/gifts).



> This fic exists because [alyona11](http://alyona11.tumblr.com) brainstormed the plot with me, and many of the story elements, including [Narvin's wrist-cuff](http://alyona11.tumblr.com/post/179458155221/what-time-is-it-its-time-to-sleep-and-post-pics), are her doing. I am so glad she's around, so we can shout about our shippy feelings together.
> 
> And as always, my eternal gratitude to [redtailedhawk90](http://redtailedhawk90.tumblr.com) for her feedback on my writing, her patience with the fandoms we don't happen to share, and her friendship.

When Leela wakes up in the middle of the night, she instantly realizes something is wrong. Narvin sleeps next to her as usual, but he has rolled to the far side of the mattress, out of reach. These sheets feel rougher, and the blanket heavier than when they came to bed. Usually if he grows cold in the middle of the night he pulls her closer, basking in her human body temperature, instead of bothering to fetch extra covers.

More than anything else, this bedroom _smells_ wrong. Narvin is himself, she can tell that much, but his is the only familiar scent. This isn’t their flat; this place has the scent of a spaceport or a hospital room, someplace visited but not lived in. Have the two of them been kidnapped, transported away in their sleep? After so many years traveling with the Doctor, living on Gallifrey, and surviving the Time War, Leela has learned that Occam’s Razor generally doesn’t apply to her life. The most outlandish explanation is usually the likeliest, in her experience.

Moving silently, she edges over to him, so they can face this threat together. Her hand finds his shoulder, her mouth drawing close to his ear, and as quietly as possible she breathes, “Narvin, wake up.”

He stirs groggily, and then suddenly goes stiff and still – his instinct has also clued him in that something is wrong, Leela thinks in relief. She hears him turn his head in her direction, then he shifts away from her touch. In a violent flurry of movement, he leaps out of bed and strikes a nearby wall panel to activate the lights.

Leela pushes up to sit, squinting as her eyes adjust to the brightness. She knows this place, and it isn’t her own bedroom, but the quarters of the CIA Coordinator: neat to the point of sterility, and chock full of furniture she doesn’t recognize. Narvin stands several paces away, staring at her in open-mouthed shock, his face red with fury.

“You!” he hisses, the word filled with such loathing that it feels like a slap to the face. “What the hell are you doing here? How did you get into my bed?”

In this instant, several more important details sink in: Narvin came to bed bearded last night, and now stands before her clean-shaven. He’s wearing long shorts, as is his custom when they sleep, but his bare chest lacks the scars he earned during their adventures on the Axis. The hair atop his head is darker and fuller than it has been in years; his cheeks are rounder, with youth and soft living. He regards her skimpy nightgown with disgust, scanning her hands and thighs for weapons.

He isn’t wearing the leather and metalwork wrist-cuff she presented him with at their bonding ceremony, a symbol of their lifelong pledge of fidelity. This isn’t the Time Lord she married last month, and certainly not the one she made love to last night.

This might be _a_ Narvin, but isn’t _her_ Narvin.

Without taking her eyes from this stranger-who-is-not-a-stranger, she touches her thumb to the middle finger of her right hand, to reassure herself that her wedding ring is still there. She hasn’t taken it off since he placed it on her hand, and its warm metal presence reassures her. 

She trusts that what she’s experiencing is true, and not a hallucination or artificial construct, because everything smells and feels real, and her instinct shouts loud and clear about the mortal danger she’s facing. That being certain, her mind races through possibilities: she’s been drawn into an alternate Gallifrey, like the ones they explored on the Axis; she’s been flung backward in time, before the Axis altogether; she’s been scooped from home and deposited into this place, with this hostile Narvin, by an enemy.

Whatever the scenario, she’s also certain that the sight of her in his bed has enraged this Narvin to a dangerous degree: animosity rolls off him like a fog. Innumerable times in her life, Leela has faced those who wish to see her dead, and every single time her opponent’s eyes have held the same cold fire. The Time Lord standing in front of her now – her husband who is not her husband – regards her with that exact murderous expression.

“Answer me, savage! Why the hell are you here?” he barks again.

“I do not know why I am here,” Leela replies truthfully, her tone soft without being gentle. She doesn’t want to provoke this Narvin, but she won’t betray weakness, either.

“Did Romana send you to threaten me, to put a stop to Darkel’s inquest? No, no, I don’t suppose Romana has the stomach for such business. It would have been Braxiatel. Does he imagine I would be intimidated, or did he just order you to gut me while I’m sleeping?”

“Where do you think I have hidden a knife to gut you with?” She holds out her arms, gesturing to her relative state of undress. “No one sent me.”

It dawns on him then, that her skimpy nightdress and bare skin might have another intent. “Surely you didn’t break into my quarters and crawl into my bed imagining that you could seduce me – that I would ever _touch_ a creature such as yourself!” These words sputtered from Narvin’s lips feel like a slur, a spear thrust into her chest. The more he speaks, the less she believes she can de-escalate this situation. “How did you even get into this building? You can’t have outsmarted my security measures – I saw to the encoding algorithms myself!”

“I tell you, I do not know why I am here,” she repeats, straining to keep the panic and anger from her voice. It would be easy to yell accusations back at him, because arguing feels comfortable and familiar. “I went to sleep in my own bed, and woke up in this place.”

“Unlikely,” he growls. He backs up another step, his gaze darting to the bedside table behind her, and then to the darkened doorway that leads to the living area. She knows from his calculating look that he’s deciding whether to lunge past her for a concealed weapon, or dash to the other room to call for help on the communication panel. She also knows she can’t let him reach either one until she has better grasp on the whole situation – and specifically whether Romana is nearby, and if she’s safe to contact for help.

Narvin asks, “Are you here because of Andred? Do you imagine I have answers about his disappearance?”

Leela has already asked Narvin about Andred’s fate – she drew her knife on him in his CIA office and demanded an explanation long before Pandora’s civil war. This version of him hasn’t experienced that confrontation yet; or if this is an alternate Gallifrey, maybe he never will.

His shoulders shift a split-second before he dives through the darkened door, scrambling for a communication panel to call for reinforcements. Leela springs at the table behind her, locating the concealed staser and whirling around to chase Narvin into the other room.

She doesn’t have time to check the staser’s power settings or deactivate the safety, because Narvin already stands at the communication panel, his finger on a switch. Reaching from behind him, she hooks him by the throat and yanks him away from the wall. He staggers backward and catches hold of her arm at the same time, dragging her to the ground as he falls. They hit the floor side by side in a winded thump, and she doesn’t bother trying to speak with him anymore, because his seething animosity has turned into a desperate bid for survival. He has misinterpreted her act of self-defense, believing that she has lunged for the kill.

Leela has wrestled with Narvin before: occasionally when she talks him into sparring practice, more often in foreplay, frisky banter and tickling, racing to see who can strip the other’s clothes off first. She knows his physical strengths, and has no doubt she can best him in a hand-to-hand contest – especially this Narvin, young and soft and without the benefit of her combat tutelage.

Their struggle is brief but brutal: he hits the ground, the breath knocked out of him in a sharp gasp, but his respiratory bypass allows him to ignore the lack of air. He knees her in the thigh and simultaneously grabs her hair, yanking hard. She growls, driving her fist into his crotch as hard as she can in such close quarters. He can’t make a noise, with no air in his lungs, but his body softens in pain. She hoped he’d curl into a fetal position and let go, but he keeps hold of her hair and lands an open-handed blow across her face. Her ears ring with the force of it and she blinks, to clear her vision; he’s stronger than she is, by virtue of his alien physiology, but she’s quicker and better trained. Her back arches and she bites off a second scream as he yanks her hair harder; in a flash she forces their bodies parallel, bringing her face close to his. He’s wriggling, simultaneously trying to crawl away and get to his feet, but she wraps her leg around his knee and keeps him down. Punching him from this angle would be ineffectual, so she executes a grappling maneuver, shifting both of their centers of gravity, and suddenly he’s on his back. Less than a heartbeat passes before she’s straddling his hips; he tries to buck her off as he flails, striking and scratching and yanking her hair. She punches his throat with her left fist, and his face with her right.

His head snaps sideways and she punches him again, aiming to daze him so she can sort out the staser and stun him before he gets up again. Her wedding ring slices his cheek, her knuckles split his lip, and dark amber-colored blood seeps from both wounds. He lets out a gargling moan, eyes wide and unfocused.

Even though he’s just spent the last microspan trying to knock her unconscious, the sound of the man she loves in pain tugs at something deep in her chest. As she changes the settings on the staser, she whispers, “I am sorry, I did not want to hurt you.”

“Savage bitch,” he gurgles, beginning to struggle beneath her as he comes around.

Maybe hurting this Narvin isn’t so bad, actually. She could jam the staser into his chest and pull the trigger, but even the stun setting might prove too much, at such close range. She climbs off of him, and fires a shot from a few paces away. He goes limp, eyes rolling into his head as his eyelids flutter closed.

Not allowing herself to stop and think about the fact that she’s just physically assaulted a version of her husband, Leela moves quickly and efficiently, fetching a spare CIA robe from Narvin’s closet and tearing it into strips to tie him with. She heaves his limp body into a chair and binds him fast, her knots so tight he’ll need a blade to cut them loose. 

She pauses for breath, just long enough to dab the blood from her own nose. Her cheek aches, and will probably bruise from where he struck her. He sags in the chair, slumped forward like a ragdoll, blood dripping onto his shorts.

Unable to bear the sight, Leela turns her back on him and occupies herself with the communication panel on the wall. Whatever switch Narvin pressed, she cannot determine if he managed to contact anyone, so she works quickly to call up a data screen. Her own access codes don’t work – wherever and whenever this is, she doesn’t belong to the CIA yet – but she’s watched Narvin work enough times to memorize his codes, and so she enters them instead. She opens files on Romana, herself, Braxiatel, and any other person or event that can orient her. As far as she can tell from the most recent intelligence reports, she has woken up on her own Gallifrey, but at the wrong time. Her younger self recently returned from a peace conference, where she was in disguise as an exotic dancer. Right now, Inquisitor Darkel is conducting an inquest into whether Romana should be impeached, and the mystery of the timeonic fusion device still occupies the bulk of the CIA’s manpower. She doesn’t bother glancing through the petabytes of information on this particular topic, because she’s lived through it already and knows how it ends, but at least she has an idea of when she is.

Most importantly, she can trust the Romana in this place and time, and call on her for help. Hopefully this whole situation will be resolved with a quick trip in the presidential TARDIS.

As her hands skim over the flat screen, scrolling and opening files, Leela gradually realizes that she’s being watched. Perhaps she was too cautious with the staser, and adjusted the stun setting too low, but somehow Narvin has already woken up.

“Each time you call me a savage – or any other name I do not like – I will see that you regret it,” she says, without turning around to look at him.

“Those are all classified files. You used my access codes,” he says, words slurred across his rapidly swelling bottom lip. “Did Braxiatel give them to you?” He pauses, and adds cautiously, “Was it Darkel?”

“It is none of your concern,” she replies.

“It is precisely my concern,” Narvin retorts. Then, softly and with genuine surprise, “I thought you couldn’t read.” The words hold no insult, only awe, because he thinks she has kept this secret from him, feigning illiteracy as a manipulation tactic to spy and steal information.

She presses a few more keys, beginning a message to Romana to explain what has happened and ask for help.

Narvin says, “Aha, Romana _did_ put you up to … whatever this is. What do you think you've accomplished here? If you already had my access codes to the CIA data core, what made you break into my room in the middle of the night, dressed like that?” A beat of silence, and a sharp gasp. “Merciful Rassilon, _who gave you that ring?”_

Leela’s hand pauses, the message to Romana undelivered. The silver metal glints on the middle finger of her right hand, and she turns to find Narvin leaning forward in his chair, straining at his bonds as he tries to get a better look at Leela’s wedding band. Blood has streaked from his swollen lip and down his chin, dribbling onto his bare chest, amber flecks across his pale skin. His cheek has gone deep orange, and he’ll likely have a black eye tomorrow.

“Why does it matter?”

“Because you can’t have it. It’s impossible. That ring is locked inside the CIA’s vaults, and I’m certain they haven’t been breached. How did you get your grubby human hands on it?”

She narrows her eyes at him. “My husband gave it to me.”

“A clumsy lie!” he laughs. “I’m not nearly as stupid as you are, you’ll have to have to try harder than that, savage.”

She doesn’t pretend to understand all of the implications her presence here has for the web of time, or her personally, or Gallifrey in general, but she is fairly sure that leaving this Narvin unconscious for a few more hours won’t hurt anything. In fact, it’ll probably make the universe a better place, for a while.

Before she has a chance to stun him again, the door chime rings. Narvin’s eyes bulge a little, his gaze darting back and forth between Leela and the entrance.

“Tell them to go away,” she hisses quietly, picking up the staser and aiming it at him again.

“I will not,” he replies, sitting up straight in his chair, staring at her as if she’s a junior operative up for review in his Coordinator’s office. “If you pull that trigger, they’ll hear the blast and come in, regardless. It doesn’t matter what you do, you’ve lost control of this situation. If you surrender to me now, before they force the door open, I’ll see that you’re treated humanely.”

“If I stun you and they force the door, there will be one less enemy for me to fight, and I do not have to listen to the bile oozing from your wretched mouth,” she snaps.

The door chime rings again, and from outside someone calls, “Coordinator? Coordinator!”

Leela knows that voice.

It’s Andred.


	2. Chapter 2

“Tell him to leave,” Leela repeats, cold panic prickling down her spine. She advances on Narvin, staser leveled at his head. “Tell him now!”

Without breaking eye contact, Narvin shouts, “Torvald! Code omicron!”

She hasn’t a clue what ‘code omicron’ means, but as soon as he says the words, the door zips open. Andred dashes inside, alone, his weapon drawn. On instinct, Leela swings her staser toward him, because he’s the greatest threat in the room.

“Dammit Torvald, where’s the security team?” Narvin snaps in exasperation.

Andred stumbles to a stop just inside the flat, and the door closes behind him. His expression jolts into utter shock and his aim drifts, even if he manages to keep his weapon raised. In disbelief, he surveys Leela and Narvin, taking in their relative states of undress, bleeding faces, and the fact that his superior officer is tied to a chair.

“Leela?” he says, pitched high. “What’s going – what are you –” he sputters, and finally manages _“Why?!”_

The sight of Andred, so many years after she buried and grieved him, is a punch to the gut. She makes a noise – not a word, nothing articulate, just a sound of unfiltered distress.

“Quit asking questions and just _stun her_ ,” Narvin barks, as sharp as a drill instructor.

Andred blinks, collecting himself, and his aim steadies. Leela’s aim hasn’t wavered, her staser still trained on him. She tries to wet her dry tongue, so she can talk. “Put your weapon down,” she says, relieved by how firm her voice sounds. “I do not wish to hurt you, I only wish to contact Romana.”

“Step away from the communication panel,” Andred says, gesturing with his staser.

“Shoot her, Torvald!” Narvin barks again. “That’s an order!”

He still hesitates, and Leela should take advantage of his indecision. A warrior wouldn’t think twice before pulling the trigger, because it’s basic strategy: eliminate the greatest threat. But right now she doesn’t feel like a warrior; she feels like a widow. Perhaps whatever force brought her back in time, to this moment, has compromised her judgment. Perhaps all of the terrible things she went through during the Time War left her soft to the point of weakness. Whatever the case, she cannot bring herself to hurt him right now, no matter the tactical advantage.

“Andred,” she says, lowering her weapon. “I need your help.”

He goes completely still, the color draining from his face. Conflict rages in his eyes, his gaze darting to Narvin again as he calculates the cost-benefit of this situation – deny the name, and insist he’s Torvald, or acknowledge his true identity. Leela is fully aware of how thoroughly his personality has been scrambled, in light of his regeneration and subsequent decision to impersonate Torvald. The Time Lord in front of her now is not the person she married in her youth, which makes her plea a risky one, but it’s the only clear path in this dark forest she’s wandering through.

“Torvald,” Narvin growls sharply, his patience long since spent. “I’ll assign you to janitorial duty on Space Station Zenobia for the next two centuries if you don’t follow orders. She’s obviously delusional. Stun her!”

Leela lets her staser drop to the floor. “I do not belong here, and I must get home. Please, husband.”

The last word rasps from her throat, because Andred is dead. He has been dead for years, and no matter how much she grieved him, or how much she’s moved on, the sight of him standing here, very much alive, is a jolt of electricity directly to her chest. His adam’s apple bobs as he swallows, his aim faltering.

Narvin has gone completely still, studying them as they gaze at each other, reading their body language. He finally says, “Pandak's balls, she’s right, isn't she? You _are_ Andred.” The disappointment in his voice is sharp enough to bore a hole to Gallifrey’s core, his expression one of pure outrage. “You murdered Torvald during the meeting in the lower city, months ago – you killed a good man! I’ll have you up on charges of homicide and fraud before daybreak.”

Unfazed by Narvin's threats, Andred drops his arm. “Leela, let me explain –”

“No.” She shakes her head. “Do not say it. Not now. There will be time later.” This last bit feels like a lie; while she might not have a Time Lord’s ability to discern timelines, she does know that she’s paradoxical, and she can’t stay longer than necessary.

“A touching reunion, I’m sure, but there are more important things going on. Aside from the murder and impersonation of a CIA officer, I mean. If anyone besides me was even marginally competent, you’d have figured that out by now,” Narvin says. He’s still sitting ramrod-straight in his chair, and even in his bonds he’d probably look intimidating if he wasn’t mostly naked. “Aren’t you going to ask when she’s from?”  

“When?” Andred echoes, looking at Leela again, taking in details he missed the first time.

“The time-ring,” Narvin says. “ _My_ time-ring, on her hand.”

“Time-ring?” Leela murmurs, lifting her right hand to examine her wedding band. The silver metal glints dully, filigree design unaltered from the day Narvin put it on her finger. A pretty piece of metalwork, but otherwise unremarkable, without unusual marks or control mechanisms.

If this younger Narvin is right, though, it would explain this hellish day she’s having. He might have been many unpleasant things at this point in his life, but he’s never been a liar.

“First him, then you – am I stuck inside an echo chamber for imbeciles?” Narvin repeats. “Yes, my time-ring! The time-ring assigned to me as a junior agent, the one that was retired after I earned my TARDIS. The one that I personally locked in the CIA’s most secure vault.” He squirms, pulling at his ropes so hard his hands begin to turn blue. “The one Leela claims her husband gave to her – so explain yourself, Andred. Did you kill Torvald and take over his life to get access to the CIA vaults? Were you just after that time-ring, or is there more?”

“I killed Torvald in self-defense, not to get my hands on some old CIA tech. I’ve never seen that time-ring before. I never gave – haven’t given – it to her, at least not yet,” Andred protests, tripping over tenses as he moves toward Leela, to get a better look at the ring. “Let me see it?”

“No.” She takes a corresponding step back, pulling her hand behind her body. Everything feels too chaotic, an impossible pile of thread in the bottom of a sewing-basket. How is she to know which strand to pull? This situation would be so much easier if she could take scissors to the whole mess. She craves an enemy to stab, instead of this gordian knot to unravel.  

What would Romana do? How would her own Narvin handle this paradox?

As if reading her mind, this younger Narvin says in a surprisingly soft and persuasive voice, “You obviously have no idea what you’re dealing with. Let me out of this chair, so I can sort this out.” She longs to close her eyes and pretend that this is her husband – her proper husband – and that she can trust him to fix this for her. She can’t, of course, and she won’t, but she wishes with all her might that she could.

“That’s the worst idea I’ve heard in all my lives. We’re definitely not doing that,” Andred scoffs, one hand extended toward her in a placating gesture, staser pointed innocuously at the wall. “Leela, you asked for my help. Let me help.”

 _You’re dead_ , she wants to shout, because the reality of it crowds her thoughts and squeezes her throat. _Don’t go into the Vaults, don’t go near Romana._

“When are you from?” Andred says, and both men peer at her in expectation, Narvin in particular regarding her like she’s a circus monkey trained to do a trick.

When she doesn’t answer fast enough, Narvin says, “It’s obvious, isn’t it? At some point in the future, for some baffling reason, you steal my retired time-ring and give it to her. Look at the way she’s dressed; she wasn’t expecting to take a trip. She was sleeping, or … whatever else you two do in your free time. Frankly, I’d rather take a flying leap into the Oubliette of Eternity than know the details. The time-ring activated, whether by accident or design, and because it was still coded to my bio-data, it was drawn to me. The time zone she landed in might have been random, but it would always bring her to me.” He pauses, frowning at Andred. “I really can’t imagine what you were thinking, the sheer stupidity of such an ill-advised gift boggles the mind.”

“You are right, it was a stupid, stupid gift!” Leela blurts out angrily. His cleverness, which usually delights her, is galling coming from this smug younger version of her husband. She knows now why Narvin chose this particular piece of jewelry, and gave it to her in such a way that she’d never willingly take it off. If she ever gets back to her proper time, and her proper Narvin, she has quite a few words to say to him about it.

But her Narvin isn’t here, and she doesn’t have the knowledge required to fix this situation. The Time Lords in this room are a liar and a schemer, respectively, and she doesn’t trust either one of them any further than she could throw them.

“I need Romana. Andred, you will take me to her right now.”

“You’ll do no such thing,” Narvin says, with the confidence of a man who isn’t tied to a chair and bleeding. “There’s been a breach in the timelines, and a theft from the CIA’s most secure vault, and a physical assault. Not to mention the murder of a CIA commander and the perpetration of fraud in his name! Romana’s under investigation for her inability to keep order – she can’t be trusted to deal with this properly. She’ll flout the laws of time as usual. For the sake of protecting her pet, she’ll make a mess of everything.”

“Shut up, Narvin! Romana is not the one who put me in this situation, and it is already a mess,” Leela snaps. “A more tangled mess than you can imagine.”

“My imagination is big enough to guess at quite a few things you’re still hiding, and all the ways those secrets might break the web of time,” he retorts. “You should really leave the thinking to those who are more qualified.”

Leela suddenly recalls every one of his scars, from the long nights she’s spent lovingly mapping his bare skin. One of them must have been created this evening – right here and now – because she’s about to put her fist into his jaw until he can’t use it to insult her again.

“Stop, both of you! This is getting us nowhere,” Andred says, stepping in between them. He knows the look on Leela’s face – they were married for twenty-five years, and he’s seen her spoiling for a fight more than once. “Leela, let’s start by taking that ring off. You didn’t know it was a time-ring, so you don’t know how to operate it, I’d imagine?”

“I’m not doing anything until I see Romana,” Leela repeats, lifting her chin at him. “You will take me to her, or I will fight you and tie you up alongside Narvin, and go alone.”

“I’m on your side,” Andred says, his brown eyes soft as he regards her. “After what’s happened the last few months, I know we have lots to talk through. You and I – the version of you from this time zone and I – we obviously make it through this together. You’ve come here from my future, with a ring that I gave you.” She stares at him in stricken silence, which he interprets as indecision. “The most misguided gift in Gallifreyan history, I grant you. Someday I suppose I’ll understand my reasoning, but right now, you should trust me.”

Leela opens her mouth, because even though she has vague notions about preserving timelines and indistinct concerns about affecting her own future, she cannot pretend everything is fine, for herself and for Andred. This situation has caught her so off-guard, her emotions are riding roughshod over the hard lessons she learned during the Time War. Even though his personality has been scrambled, and he is far from the Time Lord she chose as her first husband, she has to warn him – she can’t let him walk into his death, during the Pandora crisis. “Andred, there is something you must know. A year from now –”

“Stop talking, immediately! You can't compromise the web of time, like a time tot smearing paint all over history!” Narvin gasps in genuine horror. “Torv – I mean, Andred, you know I'm right!  _Tell her_!”

Before Leela can argue with him, a grinding, screeching noise kicks up in the bedroom. The two Time Lords glance at each other. Andred lifts his staser toward the bedroom door, and Narvin’s face has gone red as a cherry, a vein throbbing at his temple. He might be on the cusp of a hearts-attack.

“This can’t happen – no one can bypass my security shields and land an unauthorized TARDIS in this building, much less in my personal quarters!”

“There is one person who can,” Leela says over the noise, because she knows what’s about to happen. The inevitability of it prickles the hair on the back of her neck and makes her fingertips tingle. She steadies herself with a hand on the wall, her knees soft with both relief and worry.

Another Narvin steps through the bedroom door, older and bearded, wearing a leather wrist-cuff and a CIA field uniform. He takes in the scene in front of him – his wife’s bruised face, her dead husband pointing a staser at his chest, his younger self half-naked and bleeding and tied to a chair – and his eyes widen.

“I appear to be a few microspans late," he says. "How … incredibly unfortunate.” 


	3. Chapter 3

“What took you so long?” Leela snaps, even as she flashes a grin of relief. Instinctively she rocks up onto her toes, ready to spring to this other Narvin's side. She hasn’t decided if she plans to embrace or slap him, but that detail should sort itself out by the time she gets there. Something about his posture warns her to stay still, though, so she forces her heels down.

“A slight hang-up locating you. I see you managed to keep busy while you waited.” Eyes riveted to Andred and the staser, he reaches into his own pocket with slow movements, to prove he has no hostile intent. He extracts a small metal box, fitted with a bio-lock. “I’m afraid I have to ask for that ring back.”

“Oh no,” younger Narvin groans, eyes darting from his older self to Leela, horror dawning on his face. “Oh. _No_.” His mouth moves after that, but he only makes soft wheezing noises, as if he has more to say but cannot find the pulmonary strength to articulate it.

Without hesitation, Leela pulls the time-ring from her finger, wiggling it over her knuckle, and tosses it past Andred, to Narvin. He snatches it midair and crams it into the box, snapping the lid closed again. The tension eases from his shoulders, even with Andred’s staser still aimed at his chest.

“He hurt you?” Bearded Narvin frowns, taking a step closer to examine her bruised cheek. Andred mirrors his movement and the power-pack on the staser clicks into standby, like a bullet shifting into the chamber.

“Stop right there, that’s close enough.” Andred’s gaze rakes over the other man, lingering at the leather wrist-cuff. Leela gave Andred something similar during their bonding ceremony, so many years ago. He didn’t wear it often – his Castellan was a stickler for chancellery uniform guidelines, and forbade it – but he had one, nonetheless. His face twists in disbelief, and he throws Leela a look of utter confusion. She can practically see the myriad explanations he’s trying to force into place to account for this state of affairs, instead of accepting the most obvious one.

“Andred did not strike me,” Leela says, in answer to Narvin’s question. He turns his attention to the other version of himself, frowning. “But you should know that, because you have lived through this before.”

“I don’t remember any of it, which made locating you a bit tricky. I’m sure that whatever he said or did, he earned that split lip.”

“You earned it, and more,” Leela says sharply.

“This is what I’m reduced to, in the future?” Narvin groans in the chair, too mortified by the revelation of his future to notice the others’ conversation. “I let this current body get _so old_ , and obviously lose my mental faculties. Look at my atrocious personal grooming choices, and … merciful Rassilon, I can’t even bring myself to say it. With the savage!”

Like a scientist studying a particularly disappointing specimen, older Narvin stares at his younger self, bleeding and practically naked and in the midst of an existential meltdown. He murmurs, “Insufferable. I really was wound tighter than a clockspring, wasn’t I?”

Her own Narvin is still wound remarkably tight most of the time, but Leela decides that now is not the time to argue the point. She carefully files it away for later, though, when they have time and space for a proper debate.

Narvin in the chair squints at his counterpart. “I don’t suppose you’re from a parallel universe?”

“No.”

“Damn.” He tips his face up toward the ceiling and sighs.

“No, this can’t be right,” Andred says, positioning himself between the older Narvin and Leela, as if he can shield her from a life she’s already lived, and a choice she’s already made. “It’s not possible.”

“Andred, put the weapon down. Please,” Leela says to his back, staring over his shoulder at Narvin’s bearded face. Dark circles shadow his eyes, and his cheeks have a certain hollowness to them. He’s standing straight, projecting confidence and control, but she sees his exhaustion, and it dawns on her that she might have been missing for more than a span, from his perspective. “There is no danger here.”

Younger Narvin says dully, “Andred, kindly change your staser setting to ‘kill’ and shoot me right now. If I start to regenerate, feel free to keep firing.”

“You’re making us both look like an idiot,” older Narvin tells himself. “Watch your tongue. There may be a few years between us, but the intervening time hasn’t increased my patience with fools.”

“I could cross my own timeline and talk sense into myself, before things degrade to this point. I could pinpoint the moment when things begin to really go off the rails, and step in. Rassilon himself would forgive such a small intervention, to prevent such a blasphemous catastrophe,” younger Narvin mumbles, as if coaching himself through an escape route from this future. He’s ignoring the rest of them, like a kid in the middle of a nightmare tries to ignore the monsters under his bed.

“I shall hit him again, if you wish,” Leela offers hopefully. Bearded Narvin gives the idea a moment’s serious contemplation and then shakes his head. She deflates in disappointment.

“Just shut him up so I can _think_ ,” Andred says, panic edging into his voice, his body practically vibrating with disbelief as he watches the three of them interact.

From behind him, Leela can’t see his face, but she knows his tone. In her extensive experience, she’s learned that nothing good happens when nervous men are holding weapons. She slips forward to stand beside Andred, holding out her hand. “You can trust me with your staser.”

“Not until you tell me one thing: where am I, in all this?” he demands, weapon steady on the older Narvin as he turns his eyes to her. She cannot bring herself to say the words, but her forehead crumples in distress, and she swallows a sour lump in her throat. Instead of taking his staser, she takes his free hand, fingers twining with his. His skin feels so cool and unfamiliar – not because of the passage of time, but because she never really knew Andred in this body. Gazing up at his face, she wonders, not for the first time, if she could have grown to love this version of him.

Even though she hasn’t answered his question aloud, his expression slackens in understanding, a sort of blankness passing over him. “Oh. I … I see. This is what you were trying to say, before he came.”

“No. Surely you weren't going to _tell him_ –” older Narvin says, a touch too shrill for Leela’s liking.

“I tried to stop her,” seated Narvin interjects, as if trying to forge common ground with his older self, a last bid to salvage the situation. “Species like hers simply aren’t equipped to understand the ramifications of meddling in time. They can’t be trusted to –”

“You can shut right up. That’s quite enough,” older Narvin huffs in irritation and embarrassment. With a few strides he’s standing in front of his seated counterpart, holding a cylindrical metal device near his forehead.

“Andred, I am sorry,” Leela whispers to her former husband, a gesture of consolation as he comes to grips with the inevitability of his grim future. The last time she saw him alive, she refused to give him any comfort or reassurance, and the memory of that failure pricks her heart. Andred isn’t paying attention, though, his focus riveted to the unfolding spectacle.

“Of course, you brought the mindwipe,” the younger man says. For the first time since Leela tied him up, his body slumps in resignation, and the throbbing vein at his temple fades as he goes pale. He licks his split lip, blood staining the tip of his tongue.

“You would have.”

“Naturally.” He closes his eyes. “Do us both a favor and double-check the settings. I don’t want you to muck up this mindwipe as thoroughly as you’ve mucked up our life. I don’t want to remember anything about this fuc—”

He doesn’t get to finish; the older Narvin depresses a button with a scowl, and the man in the chair shrieks, his face twisting in pain and his back arching so he almost throws himself onto the floor. When the mindwipe has done its work, the younger Time Lord sags in his bonds, unconscious.

Narvin blinks a few times, and Leela recognizes his pensive look as he examines the mind-boggling array of timelines branching from this point, and the effect that the mind-wipe had on his own past and future.

Andred’s grip tightens on Leela’s hand, and he edges toward the door, subtly towing her along. Wary tension radiates off of him, like an animal in the hunter’s sights. “This isn’t necessary. I’ve lived as Torvald for six months. I can keep a secret. There’s no need for the mindwipe.”

She’s been among Time Lords long enough to know that paradoxes come in all shapes and sizes – tiny ones that make a certain species of bird blue instead of red, and big ones that end civilizations.

She doesn’t know what her life might have been like if Andred had survived the civil war and found his way back from the brink of being Torvald. Would Braxiatel have brought him onto the Axis, instead of Narvin? Would he have acted as Romana’s castellan in that other Gallifrey? Would their marriage have flourished through all of those adventures? Left behind, would Narvin have been zombified by the Dogma Virus, and reset to an even earlier version of himself when Romana cured it – his personality closer to the unconscious Time Lord in the chair, instead of the wiser, more experienced man she fell in love with? Leela decides she doesn’t want to discover the answer to these questions. Her life has been a good one and even with her regrets, she has no desire to revise or re-live it.

Even so, might there be a way to help Andred survive? Would this be a bluebird-redbird paradox, or a civilization-ending one?

“Could we save him?” she asks softly, planting her feet so that Andred cannot draw her any closer to the door, lifting her gaze to Narvin’s face.

“The web of time,” he replies with a short shake of his head, his voice thin with worry. Leela can’t tell whether he’s worried about the fact that she asked the question in the first place, worried about the staser still in Andred’s hand, or worried about his white-knuckled grip on Leela. “This is already muddled enough as it is, we’ll be lucky if we don’t have temporal fallout to deal with when we get home.” His gaze shifts to the other Time Lord. “Tell her. You can sense it. You know.”

The following moment of silence is deafening. 

“You could, though. You could save me,” Andred says, all emotion carefully sifted from his words. He speaks like a tutor from the Academy, teaching a lesson. “If we do this carefully – if you tell me when it happens, I can disappear instead of dying. Don’t take me with you now, just let me remember this, let me remember what happened here, and I’ll quietly vanish when the time comes. Between now and then, I’ll make sure everything plays out as it must to preserve the web of time. I’ll pay whatever price you want. I won’t …” he pauses, a frown finally cracking his impassive façade “… demand anything, I won’t ask for any more time.” The way he says it, it’s clear that he means time with Leela. “Just save me and set me loose. I’ll leave Gallifrey for good, I’ll never come back.”

“You would choose to be renegade?” Leela asks. She cannot wrap her mind around the idea that her brave Andred, who spent his life devoted to the chancellery guard and loved his planet so passionately that he’d do nearly anything to save it, would choose to leave Gallifrey, even in the face of death.

Then it occurs to her, perhaps this is not exactly Andred speaking.

“Leela, no. Do you actually believe he’ll resist the urge to meddle, to fix things? I can’t allow it,” Narvin says, sternness thinly veiling his panic. Panic not only for the integrity of the web of time, but also perhaps because he reads Leela’s hesitation as genuine indecision over which husband to choose. “I can feel the disaster down that timeline. I trust your instinct in a fight; trust my instinct now.”

Andred glares at Narvin. “You only ever knew me as Torvald, Narvin, and you’re wrong. I’ll keep my word, I won’t _meddle_ in this future you’re so attached to.” His attention shifts to Leela, his persuasion aimed at her, “And it genuinely won’t matter, whether I disappear or die. Such a minor change won’t lead to any significant alterations to the web of time. He’s being selfish, because he’s afraid.”

She saw more temporal catastrophe during the Time War than she cares to think on; she experienced the tragedy that comes from fiddling with reality and established history. People she knew and loved and fought alongside, who vanished into ether, their existence only a threadbare memory in her mind, fragile as a spiderweb. Towns and planets wiped from their maps, as if a trickster god had taken a hole-punch to reality. Truths she knew that disintegrated into conjecture, when historical fact turned to smoke.

Narvin weathered many of those catastrophes as well, her rock in a gale. Twice, she lost him to time-meddling during the War; once in particular, for she doesn’t know how long, she forgot that he’d ever existed. His absence was an ache she couldn’t articulate or satiate, and it often woke her in the night, tears staining her cheeks for someone she’d never even known. That horrible timeline collapsed in on itself halfway through the Blueshift Offensive in Telmar Minor.

Through all of their experiences in the War, Leela has come to trust Narvin’s ability to navigate timelines, without question; if he says it is not safe, then Leela believes his word. And through so many intervening years, and so much temporal catastrophe, one thing Leela has never forgotten was the spirit of her first husband. The muddled soul in the eyes of this Time Lord is not Andred’s. Not really. Not yet.

 _It could be, given time_ , comes a whisper from the quiet depths of her heart. Her instinct argues, but the voice persists. _He was returning to you, before he died. You swore after his death that he was a good man._

The soul in this Time Lord’s eyes may be muddled, but it is also desperate. He is dangerous, and not to be trusted – undeniably more Torvald than Andred, tight in the grip of regenerative trauma. Leela reads the perilous signs as clearly as the trail left by broakir galumphing through the wilderness.

“My first love,” she says, with genuine tenderness. She steps into him, arms wrapping around his body as she shifts them both sideways, angling Andred away from Narvin. His weapon falters in surprise and he returns the embrace, an instinctive gesture to pull her closer. His unfamiliar body softens against her own, his broad shoulders loosening in relief beneath her hands. Pressed tightly against him, so her temple rests against his jaw and he cannot see her face, she murmurs, “I have missed you.”

“Oh, Leela,” he sighs, her name like a prayer from his mouth, “I miss you, too.”

Over Andred’s shoulder, so he can’t see, she makes eye contact with Narvin. His expression of panicked disbelief melts away as she beckons him with an index finger against Andred’s back. Narvin understands, and takes a silent step closer, arm outstretched and the mindwipe to the back of the other Time Lord’s head. Eyebrows drawn together, he gives a solemn nod of warning. Her eyes fall closed, because she cannot bring herself to watch what is about to happen.

“You are a good man, Andred,” Leela whispers in his ear. “I loved you in the end, and I am sorry I did not tell you so when I had the chance.”

Narvin’s thumb flicks a button and the machine whirs. In her arms, Andred cries out as his memories of the evening vanish like vapor into the vacuum of space, his back arching and yanking him out of her grasp. She tries to hold onto him, to keep him from hurting himself as he falls, but his spasm is too violent.

Andred collapses backward, into Narvin’s arms. He goes to his knees, lowering the unconscious Time Lord to the floor. Leela stares at the two of them, her body numb, her stomach churning. Horror claws at her chest – horror that perhaps she didn’t do the right thing, horror that she has condemned Andred to die again, horror that, like the first time she lost him, she still didn’t say or do enough.

Before she can cry, or throw up, or collapse into a heap, Narvin leaps to his feet and sweeps her into an embrace. He holds her so tightly she can hardly breathe, but she wishes he would squeeze tighter, and stop her from shaking. It gradually dawns on her that he’s shaking too, his hands trembling against her back.

“How long? How long have I been gone?” she asks, because she can feel his exhaustion.

“Eight months.” He presses a kiss to the side of her head, and buries his face against her hair. Leela can only imagine what he’s been going through; after he woke up to find her gone, how long did it take him to discover that his ring was the culprit? How much longer to trace her time-shift, to pin down her location in space-time, to decide what measures to take to retrieve her? What sort of half-formed memories drifted through his mind, as timelines shifted and changed with her actions in his past? How often and how loudly did Romana yell at him, when she inevitably found out?

“It was very stupid of you to give me a time-ring as a wedding gift,” she murmurs, closing her eyes and turning her face against his neck so she can’t see Andred anymore.

“I thought it would protect you,” he says. 

“You were afraid I might someday be lost again, like I was lost during the War. You wanted to be able to bring me home, no matter when or where I was.”

His fingers curl against her ribs, forming fists to stop them from shaking. “Yes.”

“Truly, Narvin, this is the worst idea you have ever had. Even including the time you tried to impeach Romana,” she says.

He makes a soft huffing noise that might or might not be a laugh. “I thought I’d sorted out the programming before the wedding, but it malfunctioned.”

“Next time you decide to give me time-travel machinery as a gift, you will tell me first, so I do not end up punching your face bloody across all of time and space.”

“I didn’t think you’d accept it, if I told you what it was.”

She pulls out of his embrace, and smacks him on the arm. He flinches, but doesn’t back away. “You were right, but also you are not allowed to decide what is best for me, even if you imagine it is for my protection. Such thinking is just as small-minded as his,” she says, gesturing to the man in the chair.

A four-hour riotous argument passes over his expression, in the space of a heartsbeat, and gives way to exhausted contrition. “I’ll return the ring to the vault, when we’re home.”

“Good. But this doesn’t mean I forgive you.” She pulls in a breath. “I will, but not yet.”

His lips part a fraction, and he wrinkles his nose. “Could you at least refrain from using me as a punching bag until we’ve finished cleaning up this mess?”

“ _Your_ mess,” Leela reiterates.

He takes her head in both hands and leans down to kiss her. She rises onto her toes, her arms sliding around his shoulders, letting him support her weight as his lips press against hers. The kiss is not passionate or demanding, and certainly not a request for absolution; it’s soft and confident, a promise of patience.

He pulls away, his eyes locked to the bruise forming on her cheek, and with the gentlest of gestures he grazes the injury with his lips, like an apology. Gazing up at him, she lifts an index finger to his bottom lip, touching the place where she punched his younger self earlier this evening – a tiny scar she’s never noticed before marks the spot, old and almost undetectable, but there nonetheless. She rocks up onto her toes once more, pressing her mouth to it.

“I know where Torvald’s quarters are, and I’ll pass without notice in these corridors. I’ll be careful with him,” Narvin says, with a nod toward Andred. Reaching behind his back, he takes Leela’s sheathed knife from where he’d had it tucked into his belt. “I only brought this because I thought it’d make you feel comfortable to hold it, but it seems you’ll actually need it to get him out of that chair. I can’t touch him – the time differential can be tetchy, and sometimes lead to unpleasant consequences. Best not to risk it. Will you get him into bed?”

Still not able to bring herself to look at Andred, Leela turns her frown to the unconscious Time Lord in the chair. “I shall try not to accidentally drop him out of a window.”

“How very generous of you,” he says. He looks at his younger self’s bloody chin, and his tongue touches his lip, over the new-old scar Leela just kissed. “I’ll be back in a few microspans.”

Narvin slings Andred’s limp body over one shoulder and disappears through the main door. Leela cuts the unconscious younger Narvin from his chair and drags him into the bedroom, only bumping his head once, on a wardrobe-shaped TARDIS that wasn’t here before. She heaves him into bed, and changes his blood-spattered shorts, and wets a few of the strips of cloth she’d used to tie him with.

Her husband returns from his errand to find her sitting on the bed beside his younger self, cleaning the blood from his face and chest. He watches at the bedroom door without a word, and then retreats to clean up the other traces of their presence. When chairs have been tucked under the dining table and access logs deleted from the CIA’s data core, he returns to her side.

Still dabbing blood from the unconscious Time Lord’s chin, she reaches out and takes her own Narvin’s hand.

“I can’t remember, but I’m sure he said and did things that were … unpleasant,” he says.

“You keep saying _he_ , but you are the same person. You did those things.”

He sinks to the floor beside the bed, resting his head against her thigh. Aside from his obvious exhaustion, he also seems embarrassed – not only for his choice of wedding ring, but also for the behavior of his younger self, and the fact that Leela experienced such a stark reminder of the man he used to be. “I’m sorry, then, on behalf of the person I was then and the person I am now. Is that adequate?”

Leela doesn’t look at him yet; she swipes the last drop of blood from the younger Narvin, and tosses the soiled cloth through the open door of the TARDIS. She pulls the blanket up to his chest, tucking him in, and wonders if Narvin did the same for Andred, in Torvald’s quarters.

“You will wake up with cuts and bruises,” Leela says.

“I brought medical equipment to take care of the worst of it. He’ll be – I’ll be sore, but not enough to be suspicious.”

She slides off the bed and into his arms, seated sideways across his lap, and touches his lip. “We have to leave the cut here, because you still bear the scar.” She traces her fingertips across his cheeks and down the slope of his nose, searching for other changes, wondering if it’s just her imagination or if he has more careworn lines beside his eyes from so many months of worry. “Medical equipment and a mindwipe. You thought of everything.”

“Eight months is a long time,” Narvin replies. “My memories were unreliable, but I tried to prepare for every contingency.”

She settles her head on his shoulder, hands pressed flat to his ribs so she can feel him breathe. “Did you prepare for Andred?”

“No. I wasn’t prepared for that.”

“Nor was I.” She closes her eyes, nuzzling against his neck and trying to saturate herself in his scent, as if she can burrow her way back to a sense of peace about Andred, and certainty about the present.

“He was a lucky Time Lord.” He touches his lips to her forehead. “So am I.”

Trying to distract her maudlin thoughts, she takes his arm and studies the metalwork on his wrist-cuff. The silver is dented, the leather soft and rubbed smooth in several places, from daily wear.

She gave it to him a month ago, but he’s worn it for nine.

“Since you won’t accept the ring again, you could show me how to make one of these instead,” he says, apparently as eager for a distraction as she is. Huddled together like this, still in the wrong place and the wrong time, he seems reluctant to let go of her for even the short amount of time it’ll take to sort the rest of this mess out and go home.

Leela draws back to look at him, her eyes alight with excitement. “Do you mean it? You promise to do such a thing?”

“Yes, of course,” he replies, obviously thrilled to have struck upon this idea that pleases her so much.

“The Doctor took me to a planet once upon a time, where the wild creatures are plentiful and the hunting is good. Even you could not fail to make a kill in this place, to harvest a suitable skin. We shall go there.”

His eyes grow round, his lips falling open as he realizes exactly what he’s just committed himself to. “I thought … I mean, I imagined we’d go to a marketplace somewhere or spend a day with the Outsiders for supplies.”

“The gift must be made with your own hands, with materials gathered from the wild,” Leela replies. This isn’t exactly true; she’s perfectly willing to accept some other Gallifreyan wedding gift from Narvin, as long as it isn’t secretly a time machine in disguise. But she isn’t quite ready to see anyone else yet, and she’s isn’t quite ready to go home. “Besides, we have not yet had a honeymoon.”

“Ah, that Earth tradition Ace kept pestering us about, after the wedding. You want to spend our honeymoon killing wild animals?”

“Among other things.” She kisses his bearded cheek, and continues with a grin, “We shall sleep under the stars, and swim in the wild rivers, and eat from the land.”

“Sleeping and eating in my TARDIS would be much more … sensible,” he replies, but Leela knows perfectly well he meant _sanitary_.

Fiddling with the clasp on his wrist-cuff, tightening it, she says, “Very well, we may sleep in the TARDIS, because the beds are softer. But we shall cook over a fire, and I shall show you how to properly roast the meat so the smoke burrows into the bones.” She turns his hand over, and threads her fingers with his. “I would like to be in a place such as that, only you and me and the wild creatures, no one and nothing else around for miles and days.”

A smile tugs at his lips. “That's far too many wild animals, and more bloodshed and fresh air than I’d like to see in a lifetime.” He shrugs. “But if a honeymoon means I get you all to myself for a while, then it will be perfect.”


End file.
